Fun Times Ahead!

Over the past few weeks I've been making changes to my horses' training and their career plans. For various reasons, I'm beginning to do a lot more jumping and am looking down the path of eventing and showjumping. Is this crazy? Usually its the injured/lost-confidence eventer that turns to dressage for a safer riding experience, but I've never been one for convention.

Julius finally sound, and with a new career!

I have always loved to jump, having learnt to do it for my BHS and German exams. Those times were the only time I really got to jump as my own horses weren't suitable - or so I thought. Turns out that Julius has an exceptional talent for jumping, obviously passed down from his Olympic Gold-winning grandsire Jus De Pomme, the showjumper. I only really came to the decision to change Julius's future to showjumping because of his ongoing lameness problems. He just can't withstand the work required for PSG and the whole "in-work, out-of-work" thing is getting old. The boy is 13 this year and I just want to enjoy him and have him love life. He has done more than his fair share of work for me and has given me everything he's got, and I can see he has a true joy for jumping so that is what we shall do. Hopefully within the next month or two we can try a competition!
Chad, my 5 year old, was bred to do Grand Prix dressage. I have no doubt he could make it to Grand Prix, but I also think he would make an incredible eventer. He's had two jumping lessons with my jumping trainer Leonard Goerens and is making huge progress. We have already jumped a filler, a water-tray and a gate. Admittedly, I did fall off once when I was trying to do the filler, but the water-tray and gate seemed like he'd been jumping it his whole life! It is a bit difficult for Chad and I to do this jumping thing because I have limited experience and he has no experience, so its like the blind leading the blind. But it is doing wonders for our relationship, our trust of eachother is stronger than ever and that has been one of Chad's weaknesses - his trust in the rider. Not for long though!
I've taken him galloping once and he does need to be a bit fitter for fast work, but that's not major. We are going cross-country schooling for the first time this Wednesday at Boomerang which I'm really excited about! Last time Chad saw a cross-country jump back a few months ago he hastily span around and ran the other way. Let's hope he has grown up a bit since then. It is so nice to think that he started off as only ever going from his stable to the indoor school in Germany, and now he is out and about doing everything!
Good lord I forgot to even post to say that I did an elementary test with Chad (skipping the prelim and novice, as you do :/) and we won! He got 64.4% and that was with 2 or 3 mistakes, and me only looking at the test the morning of the competition and realising he couldn't do half of what was in it. Medium canter? Um, all of our canter is medium canter at the moment haha! But hey, if you don't go out there and try you never know.

So now jumps are pretty much permanently set up in our school and even the dressage horses pop over a few poles to loosen them up. It's so much more fun, and the horses love it. I used to think that I couldn't dare do any poles or jumping with the good dressage horses like Seb out of fear they would become lame, despite how much I wanted to. But now I realize its a load of rubbish. They've stepped on poles and gotten the wrong stride and everything and not once have they gone lame, if anything any tightness or stiffness comes from too much dressage training, like canter pirouettes, half-passes and medium trot. I think a healthy balance of both is perfect, and creates the ideal, happy, holistic horse.